Craft’s outsized personality is matched by less flashy, more fundamental skills: vivid, immersive storytelling and sharply focused, fat-free songs that have the lived-in feel of 40-year-old FM-radio favorites.

As much as the record flirts with reinvention—personal, political, musical--its modest ambition sounds exactly like complacency.

True to that nighttime scene-setter, Nocturnal Koreans ranks among Wire’s most musically relaxed releases, with Newman mostly singing in calm, sometimes hushed tones. But it’s only relaxed in the sense that a sleepless night in your bedroom is relaxed.

Dälek took hip-hop into new stylistic realms before. This time, although Brooks and company may not have specifically intended as much, on Asphalt for Eden, hip hop ascends into the noosphere.

This group is wise and capable enough to eschew nearly every shortcut of today's personality-first music culture and dial into the silence between the noise. It's what confidence sounds like.

A little more editing and pacing might have made the whole album like this, but given enough time, Triangle has moments of clarity to be found.

The Ship is a great, unexpected record.

Skifflin', an enjoyably low-stakes release, feels less like McCombs’ next frontier in tackling the Great American Folk Album than a leisurely sojourn.

They always sound nostalgic, but the immediacy of Dahlström's vocals yanks all the warm, communal feelings associated with that sound into a present where they're in short supply.

Plants and Animals have created something beautiful, even if it's not wholly original.

On its face a seemingly modest project, At the Dam bursts with ambition and ideas, offering a meditation on the ever-evolving relationship Lattimore has to her instrument and the spaces she shares it with.

Production-value is high, with Ferg enlisting top-tier beatmakers like the aforementioned DJ Khalil but also No I.D., DJ Mustard, and even Skrillex. But the beats take a backseat to the lyrics. The overall sound remains intact, but he’s even more invested in what he’s saying.

Lemonade is a stunning album, one that sees her exploring sounds she never has before. It also voices a rarely seen concept, that of the album-length ode to infidelity. Even stranger, it doesn’t double as an album-length ode to breaking up.

You get the feeling as you listen to the entirety of Lost Themes II that someone let their finger linger far too long on the butter button at the movie theater concession stand.

There’s plenty of low and high end, but none of the gray in-between. It makes for an album that sounds more like backing tracks missing the singer and the song to complete them. If anything, Too Many Voices sounds like it has too few.

In evoking Lynch and Badalamenti, Xiu Xiu have made one of their most beautiful and listenable albums, one that highlights everything the band does well while shaving down the rough edges that often turn away foes and friends alike.

The album ends strong, from "America" to closer "Off," but much like most of Royce’s solo catalog, there aren't many songs on Layers that really reward replaying or close listening.

It's an impressive influx of new talent, but you would be hard-pressed to hear it for most of the album.

Sonics aside, what truly distinguishes this recent iteration of Sorority Noise is Boucher's newfound sense of responsibility.

Please Be Honest certainly has its charms. But for the first time in Pollard’s career, Guided by Voices isn’t the main event--which, for the band’s legions of fans, is surely a loss.

Outer Heaven's heightened ambitions are best measured in terms of density rather than sprawl: the most bracing songs here pack in more radiant guitar textures, a greater lyrical depth, and sharper hooks without sacrificing Greys' innate moshability and punk-schooled economy.

The Diary is notable for presenting an official release to his intended debut. And, just like any diamond unearthed after many years, The Diary is flawed, but still precious.

If there’s a weakness with Blind Spot it might simply be its brevity, or perhaps the marked absence of the kind of swaggering sonic guitar bombast the band unleashed in old songs like “Sweetness and Light” or “Superblast!.” Regardless, Blind Spot feels like an assured--albeit somewhat tentative—way for the band to dip their toes back in the water

A Sailor's Guide to Earth is such a rearrangement of Simpson's sonic universe that any previous categorization now seems out of date.

It’s a short album—six songs, 33 minutes--but a substantial one, a deeply personal work that takes us inside the mind of Animal Collective’s most mysterious member, while restoring some of the patience and mystique that’s been sucked out of that band’s recent, more spasmodic work.

While not a record of cast-iron slam dunks, Welcome the Worms possesses enough raw power to cast Bleached in a completely different light, and one that is considerably more sustainable than their debut.

Instead of a love letter to consuming blazes, Hoop's and Beam's collection appeals to our individual internal pilot lights: those softly smoldering flames that illuminate moments of beauty in ourselves, in each other, and beyond.

While the musicianship on display is impressive, Cook's songwriting could certainly be sharper. None of these songs have strong enough hooks to encourage repeat listening or stand out from the rest of the EP.